Run, Jimmy, Run!
by lovova
Summary: It was during an ordinary mission, just delivering a package from a student to someone in the town, that Jimmy finally snapped. T for mild amount of cursing.


Run, Jimmy, Run!

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_(A tiny oneshot. Inspired by a moment in the game when I was overcome by Blue Request People while I desperately needed to get to my next mission, and during an interval of the stampede my brother shouted 'Run! Run, before somebody else needs your help!')_

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It had started off simple enough.

_Jimmy, there's this guy I like, but I'm too scared to talk to him. Do you mind putting these chocolates in his locker for me?_ _I'll pay. Please, Jimmy?_

For five bucks, Jimmy had been happy to do it. After fulfilling the task quickly and receiving payment, word spread fast, and it wasn't long before someone else had come up to him, asking for help with something or other.

_Jimmy, I need my friends help with our project, but he's stuck in class. Could you pull the fire alarm?_

At first, it had been fine. In fact, as his reputation for being able to do anything grew and more and more requests came in, it had even been fun. People had started giving him weird requests, just to see if he could do it. _Jimmy, pick open three lockers, okay? Jimmy, blow up a toilet. Jimmy, we know the girls told paid you to egg our dorm, so now we want you to egg theirs._

_ Jimmy, walk me to the girls dorms._

That had been his first 'protection' job, other than his 'missions', as he had started calling them in his head, that he did for the cliques. A tall, pretty girl had accidently stayed out past dark, and nervous to walk home by herself, had offered him ten bucks to walk her home. He had been happy to do so, but he had had to take out some cat-calling bullies on the way, and that was how word had spread that he was reliable when it came to errands concerning more important things, like deliveries, and bodily protection.

That was when the requests had gotten more…demanding.

_Jimmy, there's this big boy that's been picking on me, can you scare him off? Jimmy, they stole my things, please get them back! Jimmy, they said they were going to hurt me, please protect me!_

And he could handle that. He really could. It wasn't the sudden extra world load that was tiring him out, or the increasing difficulties of the requests that made him start taking less sparse paths to the places he was going…

It was the _desperation_ in their faces, the _need_ in their voices. Those little, terrible signs that were part of their basic body language that basically said, 'I've used up all other options. You're my only hope.'

It was a terrible thing, to be someone's last option.

Eventually, it had started getting to him. He still demanded payment, but he had already gathered so much money that he no longer needed it, nor paid any attention to the sums they offered. He started as easily accepting missions for five dollars that were worth fifty, and was equally silent when it was the other way around, because he didn't even notice at this point. He would walk down busy paths, and overhear some punk teasing some girl with glasses, or some greaser calling a prep a homo, or a prep calling a greaser dirt, and it stopped mattering who was weaker or who was stronger, or whether he was going to get any payment at all, because he couldn't help but _attack whoever had started it_! He had even tackled a nerd that had gotten into a dangerous mindframe and had attacked a known bully, and even though the bully could have easily taken care of himself from the nerd and Jimmy knew this, _it still hadn't mattered_, because all of the sudden his default was on _protect, protect, protect!_

Jimmy was starting to care too much, and it was _shattering_ him.

And the demands still came.

_Jimmy, I messed up and now a Jock is out to get me…Jimmy, the teacher stole my diary…Jimmy, I think she's cheating…_

And then, suddenly, the demands stopped having goals.

Oh, sure, he knew they must have. The person making the request must have communicated some goal or another, because he eventually completed them and got paid; but Jimmy could only hear these goals at a subconscious level. The missions were getting done, but he was no longer sure what he was doing or who he was doing it for and why it was being done. All he knew was the basic _need_ in their demands, like a whirlwind of sound that only made sense once you stopped listening.

_Jimmy, please, they're hurting me._

_ Jimmy, help, they're degrading me!_

_ Jimmy, please…_

_ Jimmy, help…._

And no amount of payment could make up for the emotional drain that these requests were beginning to cost him. But he couldn't stop. It was like an odd, addictive habit, this bizarre need to help people. It was like somewhere down the line, he had lost his ability to feel apathy; their hurt was his, and when he was hurt he got pissed, and when he was angry he _did_ things about it…and that's what was killing him.

_Jimmy…_

_ Jimmy…!_

It was during an ordinary delivery mission, just delivering a package from a student to someone in the town, that he finally snapped. The package still in his hands, possibly holding drugs or possibly holding comic books, who knew, Jimmy ran past his delivery point. He wasn't thinking about it, wasn't even consciously aware he had done it until he was five blocks away, and he knew that if the errand was to get done and he was to get paid, he would need to turn around and find his way back.

Instead, without really thinking about it, he dropped the package and went faster.

A new voice invaded his head, spreading around the places where all the need and the want of the people around him had dominated for the last few weeks; a loud, demanding voice that sounded both distinctly and nothing like his own.

It said, _Run, Jimmy, run!_

It said, _Don't let them find you, don't let them consume you! Get out of there, get away! Don't let them get you, because they'll always need, Jimmy, they'll always want, and you can't fix that no matter how many toilets you blow up or how many girls you walk home! They'll always need you Jimmy!_

_ Run, run, run!_

And so he did. He kept running and running as fast as his tired body would let him, past the boys taunting the old homeless man, pass the man stealing the bicycle, past countless Greasers and Preps and Nerds and Jocks who either needed his help or needed a beating. And he ran as hard and fast as he could to get as far away as he could, but that was the weird thing about Bullworth; no matter what path you take, or what road you go down, or how far a straight path you run through, somehow every angle leads back to Bullsworth Academy. While it was merely a school for the kids too rough for the rest of the world, for that moment it felt like it might just have very well been the center of the universe, or at least, Jimmy suspected, _his_ universe. This frightened him to no end, for he suspected that, through every students need he fulfilled or want he appeased, he was slowly becoming more and more powerful in the center of that universe, and_ that_ was a very big responsibility indeed.

He knew, somewhere in his mind, that this was merely the mad ramblings of a brain worn to exhaustion, but he still desperately wanted to escape this responsibility, and so he continued running, hoping to find a path, any path, that would lead him out of Bullsworth. He tried to go out the way his parents had brought him in, but he found his recollection of the journey dim, and could not find the way. He asked locals for the way, but found their directions all lead to dead ends, or worst yet, again back to the academy.

Still, he ran. Past every need and want and hand that reached out to him, desperate to drag him down, desperate to keep him here in this town that he was beginning to suspect there was no escape from.

He ran, until once again, he wound up in front of the dreaded, cursed academy. He still had the strength, and he could have kept running…but a hand reached out, and he couldn't ignore it. It was a hand he knew, and a hand that, at some point or another, in the same, weird way he was starting to feel about the town, he had come to feel responsible for. And it was a hand that made itself known in a tiny, non-intruding way, in the simple form of a shy but eagerly sounded, "Hey, Jimmy."

Jimmy felt his hands shake, his heart pounding in his chest from the exercise he had forced himself through, his panic at stopping as the voice screamed, '_Run, Jimmy, run!'_, and though he readied his legs to move once again, it was his mouth that moved instead.

"Hey, Pete."

Peter looked him up and down and frowned in that mildly disapproving, worried way he usually did, as he asked, "You were gone all night. Did you get into another fight?"

'_No_,' Jimmy wanted to respond, '_I spent all night avoiding fights. I spent all night avoiding the reasons I get into fights. I spent all night avoiding people like you, Pete. It was the hardest thing I've ever done. And I failed. I don't think I'll ever have the will to try again.'_

What he actually said was, "If you think I look bad, you should see the other guys. I'm skipping classes today. Need to catch up on my sleep."

He moved a leg to head to the boys dorm, only now noticing the nearly dead weight his legs had become, though he tried not to make this obvious, in case some bullies looking for revenge went for him in this moment of weakness.

Pete saw, though, of course. The boy was feminine, the way Gary had often teased, but to Jimmy's eyes the most feminine thing about Pete was the way he just always seemed to _know_ when something was wrong. What was it called…woman's intuition? Jimmy himself would tease Pete about it, had he not been sure that the only reason Pete didn't use it to its full capacity, as girls did, was because the not-quite-nerd didn't realize he had it in the first place. Jimmy figured it would be better for all if this remained the case.

"Do you need some help?" Pete offered, and when he saw Jimmy raise an eyebrow at him, elaborated, "To your _room_. Not a fight. I know better, okay?"

'_Do I need help?_' Jimmy wonderedin his tired, ranting mind, '_Of course I need help. I need someone to help me get the cliques to get along. I need someone to have my back in the really bad fights. I need help, all-fucking-right…but, you, Pete, are practically the personification of the type of people I'm trying to protect. The _nerds_ bully you, for Christ's sake! So, do I need your help…'_

"No," Jimmy muttered, straightening up, forcing the strength back into his muscles, forcing the will back into his soul, and banishing the voice that kept screaming '_Run! Run!'_, as he said, "But, it's past the bell. Let me take you to class before I go back to the dorms, I'll keep you from being caught by the prefects."

Again, that small, worried frown. Pete knew there was something wrong, knew in a way he couldn't explain that, as Jimmy turned around without even waiting for an answer to begin their journey, something needed to be said. A potentially dangerous and crippling cycle needed to be broken, here and now while he still had the chance, and Pete knew this in his gut…but he was far to insecure to rely on a gut instinct, and so forcing it down, Pete shrugged and said, "Sure" before allowing himself to be lead.

Jimmy never tried to escape Bullsworth again.

Fin


End file.
